STARGIRL

Welcome to the first installment of my newest episode type, Client Testimonials , where you hear directly from my incredible personal training clients about their experience working with me as a coach. This week we hear from Miss Meghan, a true dream client based in Austin, TX. Meghan shares her full glow-up story: moving beyond her lifelong junk food habit, getting out of chronic pain, losing wei...

This week we tackle ingénue Margaret Qualley with the help of my friend and the writer/trend forecaster Holly Friend. We analyze Margaret’s recent re-introduction as an explicit sex object ( The Substance , her Bond Girl potential, etc.), and the many intertwined celebrity dramas that make up her myth. We explore her ugly duckling origin story, insistence on her own girlishness, luminous elven bea...

*Full episode on Patreon! Join the STARGIRL Patreon for access to exclusive content <3 * I often get asked how to "increase" or "find" your inner Stargirl. I don't think that's something you can engineer (we feel it when it's over-produced), but I do think there are concrete ways you can strengthen your sense of self by living more on-purpose. In this month's...

Happy Addison Week! In this special episode we return to the original Stargirl Miss Addison Rae to review her debut album Addison , out last week. We talk audiovisual worldbuilding, heavy-handed references, her first real live performances, plus the attendant media rollout, Internet hysteria, and collective impulse to claim that we saw her first. We also circle back to the Artist vs. Muse debate,...

Lauren Kanski is the founding coach on Ladder, a strength training app that offers progressive overload training in a variety of modalities. In the five years I’ve followed her on Instagram, Lauren has had a tremendous and direct influence on my life: from getting me curious about the kettlebell to connecting me with leading voices in the health and fitness industry to inspiring me to embark on a...

This week we’re joined by internet sensations Amelia and Evan of Girls Rewatch podcast to discuss Lena Dunham, two years after we first knighted her as an original Stargirl. We discuss Lena’s work and life post- Girls ( Sharp Stick , her new show Too Much , and her marriage, chronic illness, and perma-hibernation mode) and assess the past 10 years of self-conscious scripted comedy ( White Lotus, B...

This week we travel back in time 100 years (!) to meet Edna St. Vincent Millay, girl poet and emblem of 1920s Greenwich Village bohemia. We are joined by the writer (and my former professor) Kate Bolick, who wrote extensively about Millay in her 2015 book Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own. We discuss Edna’s passionate free spirit, her tragic end, and the self-renewing Dream of writerly collabor...

*Full episode on Patreon* Follow STARGIRL on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠ for more! This week we go long on the evolution of Julia, the woman behind the cult YouTube channel Itsblitzzz. We reflect on the many lives she’s lived in her 15+ years online: DIY T-shirt reconstruction guru, yatted nightlife star, Los Angeles ASMR artist royalty, full on mommy blogger, and more. We also explore her fan...

Welcome back to the next episode of The Body Series, where we go deep on all the best STARGIRL themes: embodiment, warring conceptions of “health” and “fitness,” and what a “mind-body connection” looks like in practice. Today we’re blessed by Sasha Hanway, a coach on the Ladder app and a certified personal trainer, yoga teacher, breathwork and meditation coach, and holistic nutrition coach. We go...

This week we delve into the relentless and perverted mind of Catherine Breillat, the French filmmaker and novelist who has disturbed audiences for 50 years. Broadly considered cinéma du corps, Catherine’s movies explore the grotesqueness of sex and the body, depraved sexual longing, petulant, manipulative, and erratic women, and fraught and often violent sexual encounters. In this episode, we expl...

This week we go back to basics and investigate what one of the world’s hottest young women has to teach us about our own self hate (!). We revisit the classic STARGIRL paradigm of Ripe vs. Dead and examine the latent Threat of Dead beauty, and traverse Lily-Rose’s metaphorical potential as a descendant of Hollywood Royalty, ready and willing sex object, and generational leader in her own right. We...

*Full episode on Patreon* Follow STARGIRL on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠ for more! Today we travel back in time to the early 2010s and delve into the moody, mysterious soundscape of Kelela, the singer and dance music producer who soundtracked my early twenties. We explore her evolution from Muse to a handful of forward-thinking, UK-based producers to an Artist in her own right, why she stands...

Happy New Year! In this episode of The Body Series, I share my entire fitness journey: Growing up as a ballerina to college weight gain, inactivity, and depression, finding weightlifting and getting my sh*t together, getting injured, experimenting with different styles of training, and eventually becoming a personal trainer.  I also explore the various mindsets and motivations I’ve had with workin...

Happy Holidays! In this Christmas Special, we enter the timeless, charmed world of Dame Julie Andrews and my favorite movie of all time, The Sound of Music . We explore how Rodgers & Hammerstein evolved and elevated the musical as a form, the grand folk ideal of Maria von Trapp (vs. the self-conscious twee heroines of the 2010s), the actually-very-adult lessons of The Sound of Music , and the...

*Full episode on Patreon* Follow STARGIRL on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠TikTok⁠ for more! To celebrate the end of a wild year, we’ve got a special, 2-in-1 episode for y’all: First, Addison Rae Part II: A return to the crux of the STARGIRL project. I delve deep into my ever-evolving, sort of twisted relationship with Addison Rae and reflect on how, when I first intercepted her in 2020, she alerted me to h...

This week we welcome Miss Biz Sherbert and traverse the personal and cultural impact of Scarlett Johansson, perhaps the greatest sex symbol of the 21st century. We discuss the allure of pre-cultural fragmentation Hollywood, the coveted spot of Box Office Megastar X Indie Darling, and how the earthiness and wit that ScarJo pioneered got transmuted into a sarcastic hyper-relatability a la Jennifer L...

Happy Thanksgiving! This week we investigate the Queen of Home Arts, Martha Stewart herself. We get inside the late ‘80s suburban decadence of Martha Stewart Living , and examine the Dream / Threat of Northeastern WASP-y frigidity. We also situate Martha in a lineage of STARGIRL domestic goddesses (Gwyneth Paltrow, Alison Roman, Ballerina Farm), explore the weirdness of transforming the Home into...

Announcements: Emma is officially taking on more personal training clients, both in person and virtual! Book a free consult call to learn more here . Listen to Emma as a guest on Nymphet Alumni ! A true career high.  The next STARGIRL virtual event will be Sunday, December 8 at 4pm New York time. Subscribe to the Patreon to join in! The Body Series returns this week with my dear friend Molly, a li...

Am I a Nicki fan? This week I’m joined by my friend Enzo Escober for a proper nostalgia trip. We reminisce about the ways that Nicki’s unprecedented, cartoonish female aggression served as real catharsis during our hormonal teenage years, and why her mode of pure id is so endlessly appealing. We also discuss Nicki’s contributions to 2010s Plasticity, the “Black Gaga” comparison (incorrect), and ho...

*Full episode on Patreon* In this month's letter, we look at a handful of digital assets that have caught my attention this week (and affirm the STARGIRL worldview): Zendaya for On Running, Livvy Dunne's first arty editorial, and our first BTS look at Sydney Sweeney beefed up as a boxer. I also discuss Ariana Grande on SNL and explain why none of the Pop Princess contenders (Charli, Chappe...

This week, I chat with Kristen Lynch, a business and mindset coach (and my former yoga teacher!) who helped me take STARGIRL to the next level. Through mindset and marketing support, Kristen helps her clients turn their “passion project” into a real deal business — we discuss the importance of investing in yourself and why you have to legitimize yourself to yourself first. For Kristen (and now for...

To those who make contact. . . This week we tackle the original New Age spiritual guru, our beloved Marianne Williamson. We delve into her decades-long search for Maximum Aliveness, and discuss the principles that have most profoundly affected me in her work: personal responsibility, surrender, inner peace, and a belief in the miraculous.  Discussed: The Money Game “The Body Is Art”  FKA Twigs x O...

*Full episode on Patreon* Felt called to share how I’m thinking about the election and, more existentially, about the value of “patriotism” and how I show up in my tiny corner of the Garden.  Discussed: On Patriotism , Reverend Orville Dewey (1859) RFK, Jr. addresses the nation (2024) Interview with Dr. Casey and Calley Means , The Tucker Carlson Show (2024) Good Energy : The Surprising Connection...

*Full episode on Patreon* *Announcement* Sign-ups are live for STARGIRL in-person events in September! STARGIRL Yoga 2.0 Sunday, September 8 at 10am in Fort Greene. Meetup + 60-minute, all-levels, by-donation yoga class. Reserve your spot here! 2. Intro to Strength Training Series Every Tuesday in September, 6-7pm at RS Strength in Brooklyn. This is a 4-week, progressive program introducing you to...

*Announcement* Sign-ups are live for STARGIRL in-person events in September! STARGIRL Yoga 2.0 Sunday, September 8 at 10am in Fort Greene. Meetup + 60-minute, all-levels, by-donation yoga class. Reserve your spot here 2.Intro to Strength Training Series Every Tuesday in September, 6-7pm at RS Strength in Brooklyn. This is a 4-week, progressive program introducing you to the foundational movement p...